DeForest's Skills Find Home In Summer Internship
October 28, 2014 | Swimming & Diving, Academics
By Emily Fedewa
UNC Athletic Communications Student Assistant
Most students get internships with resumes and applications, but University of North Carolina men's swimming team co-captain Mitch DeForest created his own - and he did it based on a hunch.
A business major and with an environmental studies minor, his interest in sustainable businesses was piqued last year by an email offering the chance to hear a guest speaker talk about future sustainable communities.
Despite conflicts, DeForest knew he should go, so he found a way to make it work.
"It was during practice time, so I had to skip practice, make it up that morning and rearrange everything just to go see this guy that I really had no clue about," he laughed. "It was just a hunch that I should go."
After an hour-long lecture by EcoLand Institute founder Tolga Erkmen, DeForest was hooked. He emailed Erkmen two weeks later to set up a meeting about job opportunities.
But when DeForest asked about internships at EcoLand, Erkmen told him the company didn't offer any because of its small size. Undeterred, DeForest was given a challenge.
"(Erkmen) gave me the challenge that if I could go out and find four other students and create my team that he'd give us a project to work on over the summer," DeForest said.
So he started sending out emails and collecting resumes to create his team. He used contacts at UNC and down the road at NC State to find people interested in both environmental studies and engineering.
To his surprise, the then-sophomore received over 50 resumes and applications for the four available spots.
"I spent a couple weeks going through all those resumes and making phone calls and basically just narrowing it down," he said.
He was able to narrow the field down to nine people - three from UNC, five from NC State and one graduate student from East Carolina - before the process stalled. So he and Erkmen came up with a solution.
"What ended up happening was there was a team of four and a team of five and then I was kind of like the manager of both teams," DeForest explained.
The combination of talent from universities across the state was something EcoLand had been trying to put together for a while but had been unsuccessful with so far. DeForest was finally able to bring them all in and help them all work together.
"No one really cared where anyone else was from, everyone had their roles and everyone was able to contribute," he said of the mixture. "I oversaw both of the teams and their projects for 10 weeks. Then we had a final presentation and each team put together a 20-page project portfolio for the EcoLand executives."
DeForest said he learned a lot about managing people and being a leader during his time as the supervisor of both projects this summer. But he was also able to bring a lot of what he already knew about working with teams from his experience as an athlete to that role.
"I've learned how to lead over the years at UNC and as a captain in high school," DeForest said. "So having those leadership skills before and being able to talk to people and communicate, making sure everyone's on board and motivated and getting their stuff done on time, having that background before all this helped me out a lot."
This season is the junior's first as a captain of the Carolina team, and head coach Rich DeSelm believes, despite his low-key demeanor, DeForest has already shown strong leadership qualities.
DeSelm said the culture of the swim team has been noticeably affected by DeForest, and that his ability to lead positively and by example is invaluable to the Tar Heels.
"(DeForest) is pretty mild-mannered and low-key," DeSelm said of his captain. "But at the right times, when his leadership has to emerge, he'll lead a cheer and get loud. He tries to lead by example in his training and his racing.
"He's been trying to generate some team intensity because our team has been a little bit too laid back. But there have been years where we would talk a big game and not do it in the pool. I think he's seen that and is trying to develop a balance and...a little bit more understanding that the proof is in what we do."
DeForest hasn't stopped at just incorporating what he learned this summer into his athletics, he has also extended the entire project into academics. He, and the rest of the UNC students that were involved this summer, have now created a class at Carolina that is building on their original EcoLand project.
While he's enjoying continuing his work from the summer and hopes that students that come after him can take the project even further, he's excited about what's ahead - including using his experience from the summer to make him a better swimmer.
"This summer, we learned how to ask questions, like what is the root cause of this, what is the root question, and I think that's going to help me a lot in swimming," the junior said.
"This summer, we had to find the first possible step in order to move forward and you also want to do that in sports. You want to start and then keep building on it but you have to know where to start and what to do."
And sometimes you have to start with a hunch and create your own experiences.Players Mentioned
